You’d think it was a waste of time and money if, that is, you didn’t know who paid me to learn how to do small talk. There were fifteen to twenty out of my nearly five-hundred one-on-one executive coaching contracts. Those who paid for my services were at least vice-president level in huge (multi-billion dollar) international companies. It was never an ordinary manager. In fact, several who contracted for my services were C-Suite executives.
So why were the small talk clients all C-Suite execs and vice-presidents? The answer was the same for every single one of these clients. They were high achievers. They really knew their business and they’d focused every working day on their business discipline and its demands.
But now they needed to know how to do small talk because of their role as company representatives to community and neighborhood charities as well as national and international charities. Since involvement was important to their firm, they were expected, as executives, to attend as company representatives. Most of them didn’t know how to talk about anything except their business, so they were tongue-tied in their new role. They were embarrassed to talk about their problem in the firm, so an external consultant was the way to go. And I just happened to be available—or one of their close friends recommended me.
I begin with business execs because I want my readers to understand that how to do small talk can be difficult for anyone—that includes the well-educated and wealthy as well as the ordinary person you might meet at the street corner. I was in Italy with a close friend last month, and we engaged in small talk with people every single day of our trip—on the sidewalk, in the restaurant, at the museum, in the plaza, at a Tuscan Winery and at the airport. We initiated small talk with a young couple sitting next to us at a table by the Grand Canal in Venice. The young woman had just finished a doctorate in the humanities at University College, Cork, Ireland. By the time we finished coffee, she had agreed to read a research paper I had just finished and give me her feedback. A couple weeks later I got a very helpful response to the 40 page study I’d emailed when I got home. It all began with small talk.
What, exactly, is small talk?
In this blog, I want to focus solely on the talk itself, ignoring the nonverbals and emotions typical of these settings. Small talk, as I define it, is essentially the first few sentences and their verbal responses when two or more people meet each other face-to-face. Small talk exists for the purpose of helping people become more comfortable and at ease in social settings, enabling the search for common grounds and experiences, making trust and relationship development possible, and, in business, it can also create the potential for networking and problem solving.
I arranged my definition of small talk sequentially, from simple to complex objectives. So, depending on the context and an individual’s objective, the rhetoric may end after the two are comfortable. Or, the rhetoric may become more and more complex, given the initiator’s objective. Sometimes, you’re in a situation where you’re expected to talk, simply because silence is socially awkward.
Best conversation starters
The best starters fit the situation, and they invite the other person to share in a way that’s not invasive or difficult to answer.
“Where are you from?” Luckily, people like to talk about their hometowns. And it’s easy for them to respond to that question. And most are comfortable answering and then asking the same question as part of the response. If you know something good about their hometown, sharing it will keep the small talk going. But if you know nothing about their hometown, that can be a cue to enlarge the small talk by asking what they like about their hometown.
“Why are you here?” If you’re at a conference or on a tourist trip, that’s a non-threatening question for a response. And it also opens the door for the questioner to answer the question, too.
“What do you like about. . . . ?” This is a very useful question built on either where the respondent is from or why they’re at the present location.
“What do you do?” This question gets a bad rap for being a terribly American thing to do, not a question a European will ask or respond to. But if the respondent is American, it’s perfectly appropriate. Make certain, however, that your response to what they do is positive. Or, followed by a question about what they do.
Once you’ve gotten used to initiating small with my easy questions, you’ll develop your own strategies for initiating small talk and interacting briefly with a stranger—who becomes an acquaintance—and who sometimes becomes a friend—and who just might become the love of your life for more than fifty years. That’s what happened to me.
Hitchhiking
As most know, hitchhiking is travel by getting a free ride from a passing vehicle. It isn’t recommended in most places anymore. But the small town of Murray, Kentucky, where my college, Murray State was located, had no city transportation and few students had cars in the 1950s. So if I needed to get to the town center, two miles away, or to my grandmother’s, five miles away, a free ride was always available standing at the edge of the road and signaling my need.
Hitchhiking is also a communication strategy. It’s using information provided in a conversation to connect with an unrelated subject or idea. In my illustration from Venice, I hitchhiked on the young tourist’s comment about her recent graduate degree in humanities, to ask for her assistance in reviewing my paper on the humanities. Two weeks later, I received an insightful piece of feedback from Ireland.
Small talk often provides a coincidental connection from one subject to another subject of interest to either the questioner or the respondent.